t it. On the other hand, if, with the aid of a
purely experimental cook, you run your own messing, quite a new vista of
energy is at once opened out to you. It becomes intensely interesting.
You become very greedy, of course, and a good dinner becomes the mark of
a successful day, and a bad dinner that of an unsuccessful one; but even
so the arts of catering and of the supervision of cooking, when
practised in difficulties, are not in themselves sordid, but demand
skill and forethought of a high order. One wants company of course. I
messed on the method of Mr. and Mrs. Jack Spratt with another officer.
He was of the lean, I the fat kind. He breakfasted at eleven, or (if on
the march) when he reached camp. I ate a huge breakfast the moment I was
out of bed, and ran to a lunch later, which my messmate scorned. So,
after all, we only met at dinner, but then that is the only meal at
which company is a necessity. He dined usually on curry and rice, which
I have always disliked, while I had roast meat served up to me in chunks
on a dish, much as my dog gets it at home. Thus we got all the mutual
advantages of each other's company when that was desirable, without the
effort of subscribing to each other's tastes. We found it a most
workmanlike arrangement. When, on reaching Lhassa, we had ample leisure,
we began to grow fastidious, and to insist upon our cooks enlarging the
culinary horizon. A little harsh treatment soon taught the youth who fed
me to turn out a passable omelette, and a little more coercion resulted
in quite eatable rissoles. In the end, when he came to take orders for
dinner, he would rattle off a string of high-sounding dishes with French
names, which would have really made a fine feast, if served otherwise
than on enamelled iron plates, set upon a table cloth of advertisement
sheets from a stale newspaper. Once I had a comrade to lunch on a sunny
day, and, thinking to do him well, produced somewhere from the bottom of
my kit a long disused but spotless bed sheet, and made use of this as a
table cloth. My friend asked for its removal before the second course,
complaining of incipient snow-blindness. When I got to India and to
polite society, and began wiping my mouth with a table napkin, I
discovered that on the first few occasions the napkin used to come away
in my pocket. Of course, on making use of it, one thought subconsciously
that it was one's handkerchief, and so tucked it away as such.

Tobacco, withou